Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
Like a character in a Greek tragedy, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel’s hubris has done him in. Already reeling from a host of intractable big-city problems—ranging from
a financial inferno to chaos at the Chicago Public Schools (CPS)—a new scandal involving the suppression of a video showing the
Chicago police shoot and kill 17 year-old Laquan McDonald has his administration on the brink of collapse.
It didn’t have to be this way. Emanuel was elected mayor in 2011 as the handpicked successor to the flagging Richard M. Daley. He entered office like a whirlwind, giving the city a badly needed jolt of energy. Immediately putting his Rolodex to work, Emanuel jawboned major corporate CEOs into committing to add thousands of jobs in Chicago. He announced an innovative financing program called the Chicago Infrastructure Trust with former president Bill Clinton. He made a push for a longer school day in the mayorally controlled CPS. He unveiled a major legacy project in the form of a lavish $100 million Riverwalk.
Emanuel is famous for his aggressive style and
salty language. President Obama once quipped
that an accident costing Emanuel half his middle
finger “rendered him practically mute.” Chicagoans never minded Emanuel’s gruff style. Long run by the autocratic Daleys, the city had oriented itself around
a “Big Daddy” style of government. Chicago suffered, in Emanuel’s own words, a “lost decade” during the 2000s. Alone among premier American cities, it lost population. The region hemorrhaged over 300,000 jobs. By 2010, the world was becoming aware of the frightening scale of Chicago’s debts. A doomed bid for the 2016 Olympics added insult to injury.
Fear of chaos bred into the civic psyche a longing for a City Hall Caesar. Emanuel fit the bill perfectly and was wholly embraced by the establishment. Even when he crossed the line, Emanuel commanded respect for his fighting spirit and willingness to go to the mat for his city. When CNN produced a reality show called
Chicagoland,
e-mails revealed that Emanuel and the producers had coordinated to portray both him and the city in a positive light. How many other mayors in America would have the audacity to attempt such a thing?
RAHM EMANUEL: LITTLE OBAMA IN
ACTION!
Emanuel’s leadership style came with fatal flaws. A political
street-fighter by inclination, he lacks an operational orientation. He
didn’t appear to grasp the scope of the city’s financial problems
until four years after he was first elected, when Chicago’s bond
rating was cut to junk. His infrastructure trust fizzled. The schools
went from bad to worse, with his first CPS leader forced out and
his second pleading guilty to corruption. He didn’t get it that
Chicago’s police department hadn’t been fundamentally reformed
the way New York’s and Los Angeles’s had been.
Emanuel’s governing style has been all tactics, no strategy. He’ll pick up the phone to twist the arm of a CEO or fight to win the day’s media cycle. But what’s his vision for the city? He has no idea how to make Chicago as a whole work over the long term. Nobody is great at everything, but Emanuel’s arrogance seemingly won’t allow him to address his own shortcomings. Famously vindictive, he alienated the local press and others, turning those who might have helped him into enemies. He also brought a Washington-style spin-control mindset to Chicago. In Washington, an army of apparatchiks and a compliant media lets politicians like Obama create a reality bubble. In national politics, perception is often reality. But in local government, reality is reality. The West Side isn’t Benghazi. The people who live in Chicago can walk out their front doors and see for themselves what’s going on.
As a Chicago resident in 2011, I voted for Emanuel, supporting him because he was pragmatic instead of ideological and had the gravitas and high-level network a global city needs. But I also voted for him because he was a man without a natural constituency or base. He had to perform in order to survive politically. Alas, he hasn’t performed—at least, not well enough. His approval rating is currently 18 percent and a
majority of Chicagoans thinks he should resign.
Emanuel apologized for the McDonald shooting in an address to the city council. He fired his police chief and pledged to fix the underlying problems in the Chicago Police Department. But why should anyone believe him? During his tight reelection bid this spring, Emanuel
acknowledged that his personality could “rub people the wrong way.” Meanwhile, though, he was
cutting a $5 million deal with the McDonald family and the city was sitting on the explosive video. After the election, he simply went back to bullying his way through public life. Despite the manifest disasters that have plagued his administration, he seems constitutionally incapable of change.
Emanuel may weather the McDonald shooting scandal. But the opportunity for the legacy he hoped to leave has already been squandered. That’s a tragedy not just for him, but also for Chicago.
Aaron M. Renn is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal
The hourglass society: Middle-income households no longer the majority in the US
OBAMA'S LOOTING CRONY BANKSTES HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT HILLARY!
EMANUEL HAS HAD LONG TIES TO
BILLARY AND HILLARY CLINTON!
On Friday, Hillary Clinton attended a fundraiser hosted by George Kaiser, a noted businessman and philanthropist who was a major bundler for President Obama in 2008. He is also the founder of Argonaut Private Equity, a hedge fund that poured $270 ...
December 12, 2015
Solyndra investor who made out like a bandit \
to host Hillary fundraiser
On Friday, Hillary Clinton attended a fundraiser hosted by George Kaiser, a noted businessman and philanthropist who was a major bundler for President Obama in 2008.
He is also the founder of Argonaut Private Equity, a hedge fund that poured $270 million into the now bankrupt solar company Solyndra. In 2009, Solyndra received more than half a billion dollars in taxpayer guaranteed loans. When the company went belly up in 2011, Kaiser and other investors were given a soft landing when they were guaranteed certain tax breaks that would kick in if Solyndra went bankrupt.
Kaiser is a curious choice to hold a fundraiser for Clinton, given her recent proposals to reign in the kind of crony capitalism exposed in the Solyndra mess, and other renewable energy company deals.
Washington Times:
The hourglass society: Middle-income households no longer the majority in the US
By Andre Damon
11 December 2015
For the first time in more than four decades, “middle-income households” no longer constitute the majority of American society, according to a study published Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. Instead, the majority of households are either low or higher-income.
The study concluded, “Once in the clear majority, adults in middle-income households in 2015 were matched in number by those in lower- and upper-income households combined.” Pew called its findings “a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point” in American society.
The study also found a sharp fall in household incomes and wealth, particularly for low-income households, noting that only “upper-income families realized notable gains in wealth from 1983 to 2013.”
Together with the decline in the relative numbers
of middle-income earners, the incomes of
households in this group has fallen substantially in
recent decades. The median income of middle-
income households fell by four percent between
2000 and 2014, while their median wealth fell by
28 percent over approximately the same period.
The study notes that since 1983, the total share of income
accruing to high-income households has grown significantly.
The study found that “fully 49% of US aggregate income went
to upper-income households in 2014, up from 29% in 1970.”
Meanwhile the share “accruing to middle-income households
was 43% in 2014, down substantially from 62% in 1970.”
These findings reflect the persistent declines in wages for US workers following decades of de-industrialization, which has been accompanied by significant increases in the yields of financial assets, helping to increase the wealth and earnings of the financial elite, along with a section of upper middle-class households.
While the study’s metrics are too broad to capture the enormous concentration of society’s wealth in the hands of the top 1 and 0.1 percent, they reflect the reality that a “middle class” lifestyle is increasingly out of reach for the broad majority of the US population.
The Pew study, an analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s current population survey, defines “middle-income” households as those earning between two-thirds and twice the US median household income, or between $42,000 to $126,000 for a household of three. Those classified as low-income made less than two-thirds the typical income, while those classified as high-income made twice the median income.
The study added that the fastest growing sections of the population were those at the extremes of the income distribution: the very rich and the very poor. “The movement out of the middle has not simply been at the margins—the growth has been at the extreme ends of the income ladder,” with “the fastest-growing numbers… in the very lowest and very highest income tiers.”
The study found that, after dividing US households into fifths based on household income, “In 2015, 20% of American adults were in the lowest income tier, up from 16% in 1971. On the opposite side, 9% are in the highest income tier, more than double the 4% share in 1971.” Meanwhile the share of adults in the lower middle or upper middle income brackets have remained unchanged.
The report added, “The growth at the top is similarly skewed,” as “the share of adults in highest-income households [has] more than doubled, from 4% in 1971 to 9% in 2015. But the increase in the share in upper-middle income households was modest, rising from 10% to 12%.”
The study further noted the impact of the 2008 crisis on the wealth of middle-income households. It stated, “Before the onset of the Great Recession, the median wealth of middle-income families increased from $95,879 in 1983 to $161,050 in 2007, a gain of 68%. But the economic downturn eliminated that gain almost entirely. By 2010, the median wealth of middle-income families had fallen to about $98,000, where it still stood in 2013.”
The wealth of higher income households has largely been protected from the 2008 financial crash. “Upper income families more than doubled their wealth from 1983 to 2007 as it climbed from $323,402 to $729,980. Despite losses during the recession, these families recovered somewhat since 2010 and had a median wealth of $650,074 in 2013, about double their wealth in 1983.”
The Pew figures also show the impact of the persistent economic slump on a broad range of households, noting, “Americans are less well-to-do now than at the start of the 21st century. For all income tiers, median incomes in 2014 were lower than in 2000. These reversals are the result of two recessions—the downturn in 2001 and the Great Recession of 2007-09—and economic recoveries that have been too anemic to fully repair the damage.”
The conclusion that the incomes and wealth of all sections of society have declined since the start of the 2008 crisis is attributable to the fact that the study’s methodology is too broad to encompass the most dramatic change in American society: the enormous concentration of wealth and income in the hands of the financial oligarchy. The handful of multi-millionaires and billionaires in this social group are wealthier than ever.
Figures published last year by professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman showed that the wealthiest 0.5 percent of American society saw their share of the country’s wealth double, from about 17 percent in 1978 to just under 35 percent in 2012. The top 0.1 percent (one one-thousandth of the population) now controls more than 20 percent of all wealth, up from about 8 percent in the late 1970s.
The vast growth of social inequality is not the result of an impartial and merely objective process, but is rather the result of policies pursued by the government for decades aimed at slashing the wages and benefits of American workers while enriching the financial oligarchy that dominates wealth and political power in the US. This process has been dramatically accelerated under the Obama administration.
The persistent growth of social inequality is the most conspicuous and defining characteristic of contemporary American society. It is this process, facilitated by the financialization of the economy and the continuous diversion of resources away from productive investment, that underlies the erosion of democratic forms of government and the endless promotion of war and militarism.
This process expresses, moreover, a deep social crisis to which the financial elite, obsessed with the expansion of its own wealth and social privilege, can offer no solutions.
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